From the French retour à l'ordre. A phenomenon of European art in the years following the First World War. The term is said to derive from the book of essays by the artist and poet Jean Cocteau, Le rappel a l'ordre, published in 1926. The First World War administered a huge shock to European society. One of the artistic responses to it was to reject the extreme avant-garde forms of art that had proliferated before the war. Instead, more reassuring and traditional approaches were adopted. The term 'return to order' is used to describe this phenomenon. Cubism with its fragmentation of reality was rejected even by its inventors Braque and Picasso. Futurism, with its worship of the machine and its enthusiasm for war, was particularly discredited. Classicism was an important thread in the return to order, and in the early 1920s Picasso entered a Neo-Classical phase. Braque painted calm still life and figure pictures which, while still having some Cubist characteristics, were simple and readable. The former Fauve painter André Derain and many other artists turned to various forms of realism. In Germany Neue Sachlichkeit can be seen as part of the return to order.
- Part of Speech: noun
- Industry/Domain: Art history
- Category: General art history
- Company: Tate
Creator
- genart
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